Take My Love: A Remix
by character-absquatulation
Summary: Life goes on after the movie- I don't believe in leaving folks lonely out in the black. "Hell's position is dependent on local gravity."
1. her shorn hair strewn everywhere

**Origin of the Remix:** This story takes place post-_Big Damn Movie_, and will follow the overall plot arc of "You Hold" by inalasahl (at compromisingpositions dot net), and its rewrite "and When You Can't Crawl" by Lyrastar (on our own fanfiction dot net). Their overall plot arc is remixed here with their permission, and thanks from me. _Edit:_ both authors have now given permission. :-D

**Author's Note:** This story is an over-arching porn _with_ plot, about life going on after the movie, specifically the lives in this particular 'verse that we care about most. For now, the featured characters are listed as Mal and Zoe because they'll be the big two in the early portion. If I manage to keep going awhile (and I really plan to, I'm in love with this story), everyone else will get the screen time they deserve.

**Grand, High Spoilerish Pairing List for the Paranoid and Judgmental, _skip if you prefer surprises: _**  
These fully canon relationships will be maintained: Zoe/Wash, Kaylee/Simon, awkward Mal/Inara angst. _Edit:_ also Jayne/Vera.  
These vaguely canon-compatible pairings will occur in some form, with supporting context to make it all plausible: Mal/Zoe, Mal/Zoe/Wash, Jayne/River/Vera, Book/Inara. (I don't believe in leaving folks lonely out in the black.)

* * *

After the burial, Zoe was silent. Sure, sounds came out of her, 'yessirs' and 'nosirs' and boot clicks in the corridors. She sounded like herself, if you weren't paying attention. The trouble was that Mal _was_ paying attention. The pauses between the sounds spoke louder than the noises themselves. He sometimes imagined that he could actually hear the emptiness rattling around inside her. Wash's chatter had completed her, and his death left a cavern behind.

One day, the silence got so loud that Mal heard it clear across Serenity. He was in the engine room, just watching Kaylee at work in hopes of bottling a little of her sunlight for himself, when he heard it. Sure, the thrumming of the ship in his ears had not really changed, but he knew. He up and made for _their_ bunk, half expecting to find her dead down there. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or terrified at what he saw instead.

There she was, sitting in the middle of their big bed and looking like a damn goddess, her shorn hair strewn everywhere. The blade was still in her hand. Mal snatched the knife and tossed it away.

After that, it was all he could do to reach for her and not the fallen tresses. It was a struggle to grab her shoulder and not run his fingers through the centimeters that remained. She froze at his touch but the tears did not fall. Mal sat beside her on the bed and pulled her top half into his lap, and tried not to dwell on how her ribs were poking him.

It was a little death, hacking away her hair like this. Mal had seen it before, both in the war and after. It was a way of hanging on and giving up in the same gesture, and it turned his stomach.

Years ago, Mal had watched Zoe the soldier break. He had heard her wail in fury and despair amid the gunfire. He had seen her punch her futile rage into sandbags. He had done it himself. The war had shattered something in both of them, and they had kept on going because they were in it together_-- but this?_ This was something new. Zoe the wife and lover was broken now, in places Mal couldn't reach.

"Zoe," he whispered, and it was like she couldn't hear him. She just laid there like he had never spoken. "Zoe," he said again, "Oh, Zoe." He finally gave in and ran his hands through what was left of her hair, and felt something give. When he stroked her face he touched tears. Even though it destroyed something inside him to watch her silently weeping, he didn't let on. He just kept petting her face, her jaw, her neck. He massaged her temples and stroked her eyelids and prayed to the god who had forgotten them that she would be all right.

The sobs finally subsided, only to be replaced by shivering. Mal laid them both down properly and pulled a quilt over top, and if he kissed her forehead as she shook in the crook of his arm he didn't dwell on it. He couldn't leave her alone like this, not after the stunt she had pulled, and there was nothing in the 'verse he could say that would help. He tried to sleep, but her silence preyed on him and cloyed at him and tugged his eyes open. If he couldn't neither speak nor sleep, Mal wasn't sure what was left... until he heard it.

One of his fingers had been tracing her collarbones, while paying them about as much mind as the ceiling grates he was staring at, when he heard her breathing hitch. It was not a hiccup of sorrow or a gulp of pain. It was the old-fashioned gasp of a woman being touched by a man, and it unhinged something in Mal to hear it from Zoe. Technically he'd heard it before through thin bulkeds, but it felt new and painfully normal for her to do it now, for him.

Holding his own breath, he went on stroking her throat, and was shocked and relieved to hear it again. It was just a little intake of breath, but it was real and it sounded like Zoe, and he couldn't help but value it. So he kept petting her, and she kept breathing shakily, but not from pain.

He didn't rightly know what he was doing, though he suspected that if he stopped and thought on the matter he'd be wracked with guilt-- but this wasn't a scholarly matter, and datapads on philosophy couldn't know a thing about right and wrong out on the rim. This was _Zoe_ in his arms, his first mate and his best friend, sounding close to whole for the first time in weeks, and at his hands. He let himself dwell on kissing her forehead this time.

Mal gave all his attention to Zoe's breathing, even as his hands roamed across her body. It was like he had never touched a woman before and his only cues were her hiccups and sighs. When a few fingers brushed her face, she leaned into his hand and nuzzled it. His other hand brushed her spine and she pressed up into the touch. Suddenly she was writhing in his arms, and they were both breathing harder than they would in a firefight, and then her hands found his chest. Calloused fingers groped at Mal's ribs and stomach through his shirt. She tugged hard at his hips and flipped him on top of her.

"Zoe," he whispered, without knowing whether he was warning her or encouraging her. Either way, she cut him off by smashing her lips into his.

Mal's fingers tangled into Zoe's roughly cropped hair, and her fingers ran up to his collar and began fussing at his buttons. Clothing was discarded with military precision, and there was an obvious moment to pause as they lay sprawled side by side in the dark, with nothing but stale air between them. The pause stretched and warped till it started to feel like space. The emptiness was just big enough for Wash's memory to crawl in between them, and Zoe started shaking again.

"Yeh soo," Mal muttered, and the words were heavy with awkward feelings. Palms up like he was trying not to spook a horse, he reached for her. She didn't stop him, and so flesh met flesh in _their_ big bed after all. Zoe kept shaking, and Mal kept pretending she was a nervous steed. He tried to soothe her by speaking nonsense in a gentle voice, and if it didn't really work it it at least knocked her out after awhile. This left a wide-awake Mal tangled up in warm and wiry limbs, with no recourse but to contemplate what little he remembered of datapads on philosophy.


	2. getting reacquainted with the old wounds

**Author's Notes: **Sorry this took so long. The first chapter came out so smoothly that I thought this one'd be a breeze too. It wasn't easy, and wound up being much longer than its predecessor, but I'm still proud of the results. Hope you are too!

**WARNINGS: **Het safe sex with mild BDSM themes, all occurring between consenting adults. Are _you_ a consenting adult?

**Translation Notes:**  
"renjian shi jianghui mori zhong huo bing bing": "the world is going to end in fire and ice", courtesy of thepurelanguage dot com. I don't speak Chinese, and I apologize for the gobbledygook that likely resulted from my attempt.

* * *

Zoe always feigned sleep when she first woke up. It gave her a moment to acclimate to her surroundings without encouraging the reverse. The world of her bunk became real to her in spurts: the sheets that still smelled a little like _him_, but breathing that didn't sound like _his_ a few feet away, the way the quilt felt on her bare skin, the absence of curls tangling around her throat. Each bit of information dragged a memory in with it, and she wasn't sure whether to feel astonished or ashamed at her recollections.

Once she had her bearings, Zoe let her eyes open. Mal was in the only chair, back in his crimson shirt and tan breeches, studying a datapad. "Sir?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"Hey, Zoe," Mal replied, a little too easily. The edge was in his eyes. "How'd you sleep?"

"You know better than me, Cap."

Mal snorted. "Fair enough. How do you feel?"

She bit down on an easy answer and let herself listen to her body a moment. Nothing ached except her heart. "A bit better, I reckon, though I can't imagine why." He gave one of his nods and went back to his datapad, and then she knew he'd let it all lie if she did, if she wanted to... but that wouldn't be right. "Sir, I'm sorry. I've got no right, crashing on you like I did." It was probably Zoe's longest sentence in days, and if she knew it then Mal did too.

"This ain't your fault," he cut in, "You're breaking, and you're mine. I protect what's mine." His words soothed something in her throat; they rarely called the bond between them by its name. Still, memories were eating at her skin in all the places he had touched her.

"I've got no right to be kissing you," she countered quietly, fighting him and herself and the whole 'verse to say it out loud. She stayed the soldier and looked him in the eye as she said it, and after.

Zoe began to wonder in the silence that followed if speaking those words had been too much for him, for them. Finally Mal said, "Out in the black, Zoe, you've got whatever rights you can take." Before she could argue, he stood and bent over her. With his mouth buried in her newly spiky hair he whispered, "Breakfast's at ten." And then he climbed the ladder and left her more naked in her own bed than she'd been in years.

* * *

Zoe brought her favorite pistol with her to the dining room. It did need cleaning, but she needed its company more.

Mal was there of course, ignoring Jayne and drinking tea in the nook. She followed his good example and sat with her back to them while she fussed over her gun at the big table. Besides a puzzled glance from Jayne and the delivery of a steeping teacup from Mal, both men made it easy for Zoe to be alone in their presence. She was grateful, though it gave her too much space for thinking in. Better to put it from her mind, she decided, so she gave all her focus to pushing a rag through the barrel and getting the grime out. It felt good.

Over the course of the morning, everyone popped in at least, to grab a protein bar or a little tea or say hello to everyone else. No one was fool enough to sit at the table with Zoe, and only Kaylee had the guts to say she liked the haircut before taking off, and she was finally alone. She couldn't blame them for giving her a wide berth; she had been a mite moody since Miranda, and she knew the others could only take so much of her ice and fury. It was supposed to take time, they all said at first, but actually having to take all that time was weighing them down. It was getting harder for Serenity to fly every day for a hundred reasons, and Zoe hated being among them.

She was about to start polishing her pistol and finish up when she heard a featherlight tip-tapping behind her and realized River had been pacing awhile, from the bridge to the engine room and back. It was a testament to her estimation of the girl these days that she hadn't been keeping more of an eye out. Her new-found stability might have been the doctor's doing, but Zoe suspected letting the secrets of Miranda loose had more to do with it than Simon's medicinal cocktails.

It took the young pilot falling easily onto the chair across from her own for Zoe to really pay the girl any mind. "The grooming habits of primates are fascinating," River confessed breathily. Zoe chose the patient route and cocked an eyebrow as she shined her gun, and waited for her crazytalk to turn to sense. It usually did nowadays. "Each one cleans the fur of her sisters, picking out the bad bugs and smoothing over the rough patches." Her fingers danced across the old wood tabletop, miming ballet and bug-picking with the same motions. "Healing is a social activity," she muttered, like it was an afterthought and not a thesis, and their eyes met. There was a second where Zoe was terrified of this little girl because she's a reader and what she and Mal almost did last night wasn't for others (wasn't even for them) and River's odd little eyes were full of all their secrets. Then she said, "Inara brushes my hair sometimes when I'm sad. I bet she'd do yours too," and it was like the moment before never was. Little River skipped off to the bridge, the oldest child anyone had ever seen.

Zoe decided her gun was shiny enough and retreated to her bunk.

* * *

It had been maybe four hours since River had probably seen into her soul when Zoe gave in. She crawled out of _their_ bunk and marched herself down the clanging steps into the cargo hold, then up another set of cold metal stairs so that she was at the door to Inara's shuttle. She took a breath in, held it, knocked, and let the air out.

Loveliness personified met the soldier at the threshold. "Hello, Zoe," Inara said with a little smile, beckoning the other woman into her lair.

As friendly as the two women were, Zoe hardly ever came up here-- and not because of the other woman's vocation. She just knew what it was like to not have a space for oneself. Soldiers on the front and companions for hire both work out of their bunks. In Zoe's experience, the lack of privacy had sometimes been more trying than being shot at... so she wasn't about to barge in on Inara during her off hours. That being in her shuttle made Zoe feel like she had climbed inside a beating heart-- of course that wasn't extra incentive for avoiding the place. She sat on the curvy red couch and focused on her breathing.

Graceful hands made exotic tea, and red lips offered idle conversation: the next destination, the next job, the next payoff. Finally the spiral of words closed in and they got to really talking. "What brings you by?"

"River, actually."

Inara looked surprised, a reaction that actually gave Zoe a moment's pause. The web of possible reasons for widened eyes, from a real emotion leaking through her training to the choice to feign an appropriate response, gave her more of a headache than the real reason she stopped by.

"She said you might be willing to brush my hair," she explained, the words coming out in a rush before she could clamp them down. Kohl-lined eyes popped even wider, and Zoe felt certain that this time real surprise was involved. If only that could give her insight into the moment before...

"I'd be honored," the companion murmured at last, with what Zoe feared was a professional voice.

It was easier than she expected it to be, giving in to her weakness and letting the soft bristles massage her scalp. When she closed her eyes, the claustrophobic beating-heart feeling of the shuttle subsided a bit. There was not much hair left for Inara to brush, but they both pretended like there was and let the moment stretch on.

The peace of the scene felt unwelcome somehow. Zoe realized it gave her too much room to think in, enough that _he_ began weighing on her mind. Just carrying on felt like betraying him, never mind last night's treachery... When salty guilt stained her cheeks for the second time in as many days, a little epiphany struck: what she needed was to confess. That thought made her miss the shepherd, which made her miss _him_ more. No matter which way she went in her thinking, she wound up in the same place. "Wo de ma," she muttered at last, feeling lost and hating it.

"Would you like to talk about it?" Inara inquired as lightly as she could, considering.

This was what River had meant, Zoe realized with a start. She wanted her to unsew her lips and let the ugliness out, because she thought it'd help, somehow. It also meant that she believed Inara could take it, and Zoe found that hard to argue. The past year had shown how strong they all were, them that survived.

Zoe wasn't much for religion. Even if she had been the praying sort growing up, Serenity Valley would have stamped it out of her as surely as it did in Mal. What she did have, then and now, was another kind of belief-- the faith a soldier has in her unit. The crew of this firefly was Zoe's unit these days, and what they had faced had been no less of a battle. Zoe leaned on that faith, trusted River's advice, and turned to face Inara.

"I'm a traitor, Inara. I did it! I finally went and did it, I kissed him. I kissed him and now I'm a damn lying purple-belly and renjian shi jianghui mori zhong huo bing bing..." The weight of each word tumbled off Zoe's tongue and into their laps. The act of speaking made her lighter even as the air thickened. She couldn't decide if she'd float away or snap into brittle pieces first. She wound up stuck in the middle, shaking uncontrollably.

Before she could break or fly, Inara took Zoe's dark and trembling hands in her own. She didn't ask awkward questions or gossip, and gave her no sign that her heart was probably breaking at the thought of Mal with someone else. It was more than a little awkward, coming to her of all people about this mess, but Inara never let on. She just held her gaze, and her hands, and waited out the shakes.

When Zoe's body finally settled down, Inara said, "You didn't betray him, sweetie. You never would." Zoe shuddered and let the knot in her throat go. "He would want you to keep living, and to be happy again. I don't know how you'll manage either, because it won't be easy, but don't run just on his behalf. He wouldn't want you to run."

* * *

Zoe felt lighter that night at dinner, as though the stones she was going to hurl at herself had been returned to their mountain. River squeezed her hand under the table with a sly smile, and Inara pretended nothing had happened. Mal said little; he seemed distracted. Their fingers touched as the bread basket made its way 'round, and he blushed about it. There was a first time for every damn thing, she realized, and maybe even a second time too.

She left the table first, and wondered if he knew that she was not going back to _their _bunk. She waited for him in his instead. That's how he found her when he went down the ladder ten long minutes later. She was sitting on the edge of his bed, fiddling with her necklace and thinking hard.

"Zoe?" he asked. She knew what he meant. What was she thinking and was she sure and did she want him to talk her out of it?

She gave the best reply she had, the only one sure was sure of. "I don't rightly know."

He considered that for a heartbeat or two. "I suppose that settles everything," he said at last, and gave her one of his crooked little smiles that had got nothing to do with being happy. He sat beside her on the bed, and didn't make a point of putting distance between them. When their shoulders connected, she let herself lean on him-- steady as ever.

Zoe felt like she could sit like that forever, just bumping shoulders and waiting. Her fingers were not so patient. She discovered them prowling along the coarse fabric over his knee, and wasn't sure what do with them now that she had caught them there. "Sir, what's your angle?"

His whole left side tensed up. Likely the right side did too, but Zoe couldn't feel that. "Huh?"

"What are you getting out of this?"

"Tian xiao de!" Mal hemmed and hawed and stared at the familiar contents of his bunk. Zoe counted the slats on the wall silently while she waited him out. "You, Zoe," he said at last, "I'm getting you out of this." He still wasn't quite meeting her eyes, but a nervous hand reached across and ruffled her hair.

She realized she was grinning a little, and that he was too, and then the guilt of it all weighed her back down. The feeling was heavy enough that it could have knocked her to the floor, but she chose to lean on him harder instead. Her temple rested on his shoulder as she closed her eyes. She concentrated on the warmth of his fingers, still half tangled in her short hair.

It would be easy to wallow in the pain, Zoe knew. She could just sink into the cold, safe predictability of it and let it consume her. She could let it kill her. But Inara was right: _he_ would want her to live. _He_ would want her to get confused and take risks and warm up again. It was harder, so much harder, to reach for Mal's arm when she could have just sat there-- but he was hot under her fingers and that made her feel light again. She pushed back against the icy weight insider her and fought to nuzzle his neck. She won, and he gasped.

Rough arms circled her flanks. His mouth attacked hers, and she countered with tongue and teeth. The fingers that had been playing with her hair only moments before were suddenly enlisted, and their position at the base of her skull turned out to be the decisive foothold. When he tugged at her hair, she felt herself both landing hard on her back and floating away.

She'd never laid beneath Mal before last night, firefights not withstanding. Somehow, it made sense the way being with him always made sense-- like she was his shadow. He peeled her out of her clothing, and she tore off his, and when skin touched skin she reckoned she even looked a little like his shadow. The sight of light and dark together called up memories, and she shook them out, eyes squeezed shut. She half expected him to leave when she froze up. He didn't. He just laid there and waited. She did too, hot and cold and shivering, hoping the sinking feeling would pass.

After awhile, his hands stopped waiting, just his hands. They were running along her stomach and ribs, making little patterns much too slowly. It felt more like a doctor's touch than a lover's, and she knew why without opening her eyes. It wasn't her skin he was touching, it was her scars. Zoe pushed back the chills she was feeling to look up at him. There was something reverent and guilty in his face. No one else had ever touched her who could remember where all the marks had come from. None but the two of them could be blamed for all the spots and lines.

Mal had his own scars, she knew all too well. She caught his gaze and then let her fingers roam along his frame, getting reacquainted with the old wounds. She found the first one by memory, the second by touch, and the third by the surprise on his face. We're both scarred, Cap, she told him with her eyes. Two dozen touches later, she propped herself up on her elbows and greeted the last of them. She put her lips to his ear, the one that he had almost lost when she saved _him _from Niska.

His hands trembled as he slid a rubber on. Her hips shook as he entered her.

It was all heat then, and motion. It was a crown of pain and fingernails and bright lights in the sky. It was a herd stampeding. It felt nothing like lying with _him_, she thought, and then let her thoughts drift away.


	3. the most he could give in exchange

**Author's Note:** I am _so_ sorry that this took so long. I got a few pages into the next chapter, and then realized that there were a few chapters that needed to happen first- like this one, actually! Then it took awhile to find Simon's voice, and then to get the scene blocked, and then writer's block/crazy work stuff, etc. I'm back on now, and doing my best to be consistent about getting my writing time in. If you're following my other two ongoing stories (one is _House_, the other is _reboot!Trek_), I'm close to updating them both as well, so keep an eye out.

**WARNINGS:** Het safe sex, all occurring between consenting adults. Are _you_ a consenting adult? There's awkward sibling relations too, but they're unrelated. Cheers!

* * *

"Poor Zoe," Kaylee muttered, her head on Simon's chest. The warrior-widow's cries were rattling the ship as it hurtled through the black.

Simon sighed, not really sure what else anyone could say on the matter. "Grieving is hard," he replied at last, fighting the urge to grope her in the dark.

"Do ya think I should check on her? It ain't like her to be so loud."

"It sounds like she's with Mal, baobei," he countered, gesturing idly to the thin wall separating the mechanic's bunk from the captain's. "I'm sure he's taking care of her." A thought niggled at him when he said those words, but he pushed it aside. It wasn't his business, in any case.

Another wail came, and then silence. He felt Kaylee squirm a little beside him. "I dunno. Maybe I should.."

She started to move away, so Simon tightened his grip on her waist. She lifted her chin to glare at him, and he countered by catching her mouth with his. He whispered against her teeth, "No, stay."

When she finally leaned back, her grin was caught somewhere between admiration and reproof. "Why, Doctor Tam, I do believe you're being selfish!" She only called him by his title when he surprised her, or else to tease.

He could think of four replies, but only one seemed likely to get him laid again. "I'm entitled to it, I think, with you in my arms."

Apparently Simon guessed correctly; she laughed and settled herself back on top of him. "Entitled, huh?" she murmured, her lips on his earlobe. "Are you 'entitled' to anything else?"

It felt like his nerves were on fire. "A few things, I hope," he replied, as casually as he could, and let loose his hands. It was like routine surgery; he could trust them to do their own work.

He watched her cheeks flush and counted her breaths as he fondled her breasts and her ass. One hand dawdled at her hip bone as she laid there beside him, and he realized that she had lost weight. They probably all had... Rather than dwelling there in mind or body, he slid the hand down and opened her up.

He watched her pupils while he fucked her with two long fingers. When he saw them dilate past a particular point, one he had discovered in a most scientific fashion, he knew a single finger flick would send her screaming like Zoe (like Zoe?) into the night. The idea of that conclusion compelled him, but he chose the slow, torturous route instead. He untangled himself and dumped her body back onto the mattress with a minimum of ceremony.

"Go se!" she swore in the dark, her breathing ragged. "Simon Tam, if you come back to bed without a rubber on, I swear I will end you."

He kissed her forehead as he complied. "Of course, baobei. Of course."

There was something comforting about the rhythm they had fallen into in the last few months. She usually topped (like this), and he tended to ravish (like that), and in the course of things they both suffered all the symptoms of arousal and release. For all his dignified flirting at his parents' parties, and the rushed groping of his medacad days, he'd never had something this stable, or delicious.

It was something about her rhythm, he decided at last, as he felt her hands crawl across his chest. It was like how she handled the ship somehow, loving and urgent and steady. If she hadn't been such a perfect mechanic, or if he had been more emotional, this wouldn't have done it for him, but she was and he was and it all fit somehow. He wanted her to pay him that much mind, to be that rigorous about it. Returning the favor was the most that he could give in exchange, after all.

Kaylee came at last, glowing like a star, and crumpled onto him as he took his turn. Her hands twitched in his hair in the stillness that followed, and he petted her neck.

"I should go," Simon murmured after awhile, and waited for her to fall off of him. She didn't, and he rubbed her shoulder. "Baobei?"

She was quiet for so long that he wondered if she had drifted off. "I don't want you to," she whined at last.

In his most dutiful voice, he replied, "I should go check on River."

"She's fine and you know it!" she retorted but slid off of him anyway, rolling into the wall to hide her face. "You just don't want to stay the night."

"Kaylee, this isn't about us." He said it as calmly as he could, as if he were certain it was true. She didn't turn to face him or reply, and he didn't try to make her. He just kissed her hair and squeezed her hip, and then got dressed. A few more fingers through her hair and an "I love you, baobei," later- neither receiving a reply- he started up the ladder.

Halfway to the corridor, he heard a sound behind him. It would be Jayne, exiting his own bunk for a late night snack and maybe a jab at Simon. Claiming Kaylee's affections hadn't done much for their relationship, even if the brute had loosened up after Miranda. Simon wasn't in the mood, not tonight. He did his best to be casual, admittedly not his strong suit, as he ascended- and then froze.

"RIVER?"

"Simon!" the girl sputtered, her hand still clutching the last rung of the ladder to Jayne's bunk. It was such an incriminating gesture, he mused with the part of his brain that wasn't seizing up.

"What? I mean, you wouldn't, didn't... did you?"

Her eyes strayed up to the ceiling bulkheads. "I didn't smell you coming," she muttered feebly, squinting hard.

The ricochet in his brain slowed enough that he found the words. "What were you doing down there?"

"Listening. It's quiet there, and I can hear better." She sniffed as though to demonstrate, her eyes wide. "It's safer with dragons sometimes."

"All right," Simon replied at last. He was used to understanding his sister in fragments. Polite would be better than incredulous, he decided. "Was Jayne enjoying your company?"

River shrugged and scratched at the rough floor with her boot. "Not yet... Dunno. Next week, perhaps."

"All right," he said again, but without any comprehension.

Probably sensing his confusion somehow, she continued, "Morpheus, considering blood."

At least they shared a children's library, once upon a time. "He's _asleep?_" She nodded with a lazy half-smile. Talking was hard for them so often, even now, and it was late. Something big and crazed was afoot, but sleep was medicine enough for now; triage seemed the better part of valor. "Let's get to bed, meimei. We'll figure it out tomorrow, okay?"

A few smiles and nods and blinks later, they had settled in her room. She fell asleep with her head on his chest, the way Kaylee had wanted to do. Rather than dwell on any of it, he pretended that he was still in his residency and pushed himself to sleep.


	4. she had longed for unplanned trees

**Author's Note:** Got married in between the last post and this one. Of course, things took some time. Half considering breaking this epic story up into fragments. I'll decide sometime soon.

**WARNINGS:** No sex, just sadness. Hope you can handle that too.

* * *

The hairbrush rode through blonde locks slowly. "What am I supposed to do?"

"If I could answer a question like that, I would hold all the secrets of the universe as well." Inara's words earned her only a grubby scowl. "Oh, sweetling." She tried for a laugh that was not polished, and then a soft sigh. She did well enough at both, at least for Kaylee's perceptions. "It's been a hard year for him."

"And not for me? Hell, 'Nara." Words went unsaid, about death and dying and being left behind. They whistled through the air and buzzed in ears like flies. The little mechanic shivered without moving. It was the appropriate moment for a steadying hand, so Inara offered one.

Companion training provided a framework for engaging professionally. It instructed students in the nuances of authenticity, so as to produce them on cue. A client would not hire a companion for a truly real encounter, with all its tears and mess and blood. Only the semblance of actual life was required. Any more than that would be a genuine relationship, which could not help but be abusive to one party or the other in such unequal circumstances.

Companion training did not, _could not_, teach about living.

So Inara sat in her blood red birdcage, petting Kaylee and coming as close as she could to friendship. It was why she had left House Madrassa for a derelict pirate ship, after all. In that manicured garden, she had longed for unplanned trees.

"He says he loves me. I just..."

"Wish you could be sure?" Platitudes were always and never enough.

"If he just said he wanted a lay, it'd be fine I guess, but he keeps acting like he wants to bend a knee for me and meet my folks. It's not that I don't, mind you, but flowers are scarce out on the rim, you know?" She wiped a little of the grime from her nose. "He never stays the night."

"Does he say why?"

Half a laugh isn't quite an answer. "River, he says. She ain't hurtin' anymore, so I don't see much point."

"He's protected her for so long, meimei. I don't think he knows how to stop." Training into a client's thinking proved useful out in the world, at least. She was grateful for that, and that it could mean something to someone else- to a friend.

"I can't compete with that."

There wasn't much sense in competition anymore for Inara either. What could she gain by it? Not time, certainly, and that was all she wanted now. The words she told herself every night before bed spilled out, almost unbidden: "Then don't try."

Kaylee thought a moment, then nodded. It was like she had gained some new resolve, though what kind Inara could not say. A minute later, they hugged and parted ways, and Inara let her mind roam the forest that had become her life.


	5. measurements of us

**Author's Note:** I believe the technical term for this chapter in canon slang is "morbid and creepifying". I hope you can handle it, as long as I do it quiet-like. ;-) Also, the style here is highly experimental, compared to prior chapters. I hope it'll be worth the read.

**WARNINGS:** Seriously, this chapter depicts an encounter with implications of sex with a minor and all manner of kink and awkward. Read at your own risk.

* * *

She's full of holes. Pieces are missing everywhere; people and chairs leak out into the black. Kaylee sews her up, and I hold her hand as we run, but bits keep falling off. Lost pages and dinosaurs and shed hairs and bullets trail behind us, a bread crumb trail back to where it all began. Follow the trail, follow it home, but not until they're ready.

Two by two by ten, I tell Simon. Measurements, mei mei? Yes, I say, of us, because she is family too. He nods like the bobble-headed caper, and laughs when I think so.

Waking up meant learning to talk again. In the white I had forgotten how. I'm not a native yet, can't think in their codes, but Simon says soon. Soon.

I learned to waltz when I was a meter tall. Now the meter is me and my sister, my ship, humming our beat and dancing together. One two-three, one two-three, one two-three... I dance on her skin, and she dances on stars. She thinks in metric too. Ten, ten, ten.

So proud of Zoe. They sounded beautiful, and my heart shattered like it's been on ice. Black ice, in the black. Won't be lonely no more, says I.

There are ten rungs on the ladder, ten choices. Only two ways to go, and hell's position is dependent on local gravity. Descending, nonetheless.

There's a snoring dragon down there. He threatens fire, but I am hotter. Thinking too loudly, and if quiet weren't my game he'd hear it for sure. Only time my insides stay in is when I sneak. Tip tip-toe, tip tip-toe, tip. I'm deep inside the lair now, and basking in his scalding breath. The trick is to slip into the bed of treasure without rustling his scales.

What passes for dawn out here is approaching. Every other night I choose to be a dream. This morning I want to be real...

Blink, _shit_, four big eyes. Gorrammit, girl! What are you doing? Watching/wondering, hoping. Dreams turn real sometimes. Not on the rim they don't. Not in the black.

You been reading me? He can tell I ain't, except in flashes. Can't help it. The glint of a blade is shinier in sleep. It's no secret what we want in any case. No- too young, ain't my type. Ain't I, glossy and wet with blood? I'm old enough for killing, old enough for... Fucking hell. Itty bitty thing raining death? That should be a nightmare, not a fantasy. Go find someone who'll take care of you, bitch. I can't You know I can! I ain't some longhaired girl in a tower. No need for princes here, just folks. Wouldn't you rather a woman who didn't need saving? Woman? In all but deed. Go se... I...

Doc'll kill me if I do. I could if you don't, and ain't that a pretty thought? We're thinking on it now, for sure. That scar on your chest is ten kisses long, I estimate. Everything is metric, even this. You cut me, I cut you. We both bleed.

Don't worry, I know you don't- on the mouth... Don't. Yes... This is wrong, moony. Right and wrong is for the core, Jayne Cobb, not out here. Can't change what we are or how we got here can't deny we fit like this shouldn't pretend to be thinking other thoughts

this your first time  
that i remember  
our first could be our last i want it to last want you want want fuckitwantgodbaobeipleaseno yes yesyes. stars.


End file.
